A new hybrid pallet featuring plastic blocks and wood decks has been announced by Pallets LLC, the manufacturer of the GreenBlock Pallet. Pallets LLC’s new sustainability pallet will be introduced across the United States this January of 2016. According to the company, the new offering is cheaper and more sustainable than a traditional GMA Pallet, stating that the GreenBlock is a durable, eco-friendly revolution in materials handling. GreenBlock uses a modular approach combining both wood and high-impact copolymer polypropylene that is both recycled and recyclable. Pallets LLC’s GreenBlock Pallet not only offers greater strength over traditional all-wood pallets, it is cheaper, and it can reduce the amount of wood used in a standard GMA pallet by more than 50 percent.

Kevin Berwin of Pallets LLC elaborates that the company has been testing GreenBlock for the past seven months. Each individual GreenBlock has a crush point between 1,800 to 2,400 lbs. The heat deflection temperature is around 145F to 180F while the cold starts to impact at -20F. The company is selling GreenBlock Pallets in truckload quantities or the GreenBlock itself by the skid. The technology is suitable for both expendable and reusable pallet applications. The image below is of a load that was sent around the world, making multiple stops with no damage to load or pallet. For more information, please visit www.palletsllc.com.

U.S. Containerized Trade Outlook Cautious in Face of Global Uncertainty

Except for a handful of sectors such as automaking, global manufacturing activity has been in the doldrums, a situation that’s contributed to weak demand and the oversupply of key commodities. Read more.

RIT Students Create Innovative Packaging

Students from RIT’s College of Applied Science and Technology joined interdisciplinary teams with students from industrial design and graphic design departments to compete for the 2015 Wegmans Design Challenge. One creative design for greek yoghurt resulted in more product per unit load, as well as optimizing for reusables:

That potential also included a return to reusable crates. Using this design, Wegmans could ship 37 percent more product, the equivalent, the students said, of 40,000 more cups. It could potentially mean eliminating the need for 16,000 square feet of corrugated paperboard per truck.

FDA Bans Chemicals Linked to Cancer That Have Been Used in Expendable Packaging

Under pressure from the Environmental Working Group (EWG) and other environmental and health groups, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is banning three grease-resistant chemical substances linked to cancer and birth defects from use in pizza boxes, microwave popcorn bags, sandwich wrappers and other food packaging. Read more.